Various applications employ glass articles with conductors, including display devices and other electronic devices. These articles often employ metal conductors on one or more of their exterior surfaces. While the approaches used to process such conductors are relatively low in cost (e.g., electroplating), metal conductors on the exterior surfaces of glass articles are prone to environmental degradation. For certain application environments, these articles must also include other design features (e.g., polymeric sealants) to protect the conductors resulting in higher packaging costs and/or potential losses in temperature resistance.
In certain applications, the use of metallic conductors on an exterior surface of a glass article can reduce its aesthetic appeal. For example, a glass article employing a metal conductor on a visible portion of one of its exterior surfaces (e.g., a display device application) may experience a loss in aesthetics associated. The region of the exterior surface containing the metal conductor may exhibit visible height discontinuities associated with the conductor thickness.
Other applications employing glass articles with conductors address the foregoing environmental degradation and aesthetic concerns by situating their conductors inside the glass portion of the article. These glass articles are often made by sandwiching metal conductor films or traces between two or more glass substrates. The glass substrates are then sealed through various means around the conductors (e.g., other than in regions requiring electrical connections to the conductors). Nevertheless, these processes can be expensive, particularly in view of the criticality of the sealing step. In addition, the processes used to sandwich one or more conductors between the glass substrates can introduce defects into the substrates that result in a loss in strength for the glass article. In addition, the fixturing and process steps to seal the conductors within the substrates can limit the available shapes of the substrates to those that can be readily bonded through conventional processing including high temperature pressing and/or sintering steps (e.g., to flat rectangular sheets).
Accordingly, a need exists for electrically conductive glass articles with one or more of the following attributes: aesthetic appeal, low manufacturing costs, high environmental resistance and flexibility in terms of manufacturing and design aspects.